Following Directions: Stories about improvising
The Story Collider
Story Collider, Inc.
4.4 • 824 Ratings
🗓️ 14 September 2018
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we're presenting stories about the difficulties of following instructions -- whether it's medical advice or a recipe.
Part 1: Science writer Cassandra WIllyard is frustrated by the restrictions put on her during her pregnancy.
Part 2: Comedian Joseph Scrimshaw is terrified of messing up when his new museum job requires him to bake.
Cassandra Willyard is a freelance science journalist who likes long walks, international travel, and infectious diseases, the more neglected the better. She earned a BS in Biological Aspects of Conservation (and a certificate in drinking) from the University of Wisconsin and an MA in Science Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She also served as Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia. You can read her work in Discover, Popular Science, and Nature. She also blogs regularly for The Last Word on Nothing. After spending several years in New York City, Cassandra moved back to Midwest. She now lives in Madison with her husband and daughter. But she still enjoys sarcasm and wearing black.
Joseph Scrimshaw is a comedian, writer, and host based in Los Angeles, as well as a Story Collider producer. As a comedian, he’s appeared at SF SketchFest, Chicago Improv Festival, Dragon Con, headlined on Jonathan Coulton’s JoCoCruise, appeared on Wil Wheaton’s TableTop, and more. Joseph has written for Adult Swim, the movie riffing group, RiffTrax, Screen Junkies, and was a writer/performer on Wits, where he wrote sketches for Paul F. Tompkins, Dave Foley, Neil Gaiman, and more. Joseph’s plays Adventures in Mating, An Inconvenient Squirrel, and My Monster (written with Bill Corbett) have been performed all over the US, the UK, and strangely Bulgaria. His popular comedy podcast Obsessed is part of the Feral Audio podcast network and has been listed as a Staff Favorite on iTunes multiple times. Joseph also co-hosts the Star Wars podcast feed, ForceCenter. Joseph has released multiple comedy albums including 2015’s Rebel Scum and 2013’s Flaw Fest. John Hodgman said of the album, “I am glad Joseph Scrimshaw has the power of thought and audible speech, or else this very funny album would not exist.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A science story, huh? |
| 0:04.8 | Is NYU scientist the... |
| 0:06.6 | I felt. |
| 0:07.6 | I felt. I was so... |
| 0:08.7 | And I just thought, well... |
| 0:09.6 | It was that golden moment. |
| 0:12.8 | Because science was on my side. |
| 0:27.3 | Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Story Collider, where we bring you true personal stories about science. |
| 0:35.0 | I am your host, Aaron Barker, and this week we're presenting stories about the difficulties of following directions. |
| 0:41.3 | Sometimes in science, it's very important to follow directions. When I was in high school, I was a terrible biology student, and I relied very heavily on my lab partner, |
| 0:47.9 | who was my good friend Scotty. And I think my biology teacher sort of caught on to this because |
| 0:54.1 | she reassigned all of the lab partners, |
| 0:57.1 | and this time we couldn't choose. |
| 0:59.0 | And I got matched up with this girl named Laura, who loathed me for very complicated reasons related to a boy named Thomas McClune. |
| 1:08.2 | Shout out to Thomas, if he's listening. |
| 1:10.4 | Anyway, I had to start figuring out |
| 1:12.8 | how to do science on my own after that, and I actually started learning and getting better. |
| 1:18.2 | And then one day we had this assignment. Honestly, I can't for the life of me remember what it was |
| 1:24.3 | supposed to be teaching us or what exactly it was, but basically we had to put |
| 1:30.1 | all these things in a petri dish and mix them around and then stick them in an incubator. |
| 1:36.2 | And Mrs. Deek made this really big deal about how it had to go in the incubator right side up. |
| 1:40.8 | It couldn't be upside down or else the whole thing would be ruined and we'd get a |
... |
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